2. Now, secondly, her greatness. Here let us suppose that our first parents had overcome in their trial, and had gained for their descendants for ever the full possession, as if by right, of the privileges which were promised to their obedience--grace here and glory hereafter. Is it possible that those descendants, pious and happy from age to age in their temporal homes, would have forgotten their benefactors? Would they not have followed them in thought into the heavens, and gratefully commemorated them on earth? The history of the temptation, the craft of the serpent, their steadfastness in obedience--the loyal vigilance, the sensitive purity of Eve--the great issue, salvation wrought out for all generations--would have been never from their minds, ever welcome to their ears. This would have taken place from the necessity of our nature. Every nation has its mythical hymns and epics about its first fathers and its heroes. The great deeds of Charlemagne, Alfred, Coeur de Lion, Wallace, Louis the Ninth, do not die; and though their persons are gone from us, we make much of their names. Milton's Adam, after his fall, understands the force of this law, and shrinks from the prospect of its operation:
"Who of all ages to succeed but, feeling
The evil on him brought by me, will curse
My head? Ill fare our ancestor impure;
For this we may thank Adam."
If this anticipation has not been fulfilled in the event, it is owing to the needs of our penal life, our state of perpetual change, and the ignorance and unbelief incurred by the fall; also because, fallen as we are, from the hopefulness of our nature we feel more pride in our national great men than dejection at our national misfortunes. Much more then in the great kingdom and people of God--the saints are ever in our sight, and not as mere ineffectual ghosts, but as if present bodily in their past selves. It is said of them, "Their works do follow them;" what they were here, such are they in heaven and in the church. As we call them by their earthly names, so we contemplate them in their earthly characters and histories. Their acts, callings, and relations below are types and anticipations of their mission above. Even in the case of our Lord himself, whose native home is the eternal heavens, it is said of him in his state of glory, that he is a "priest for ever;" and when he comes again he will be recognized, by those who pierced him, as being the very same that he was on earth. The only question is, whether the Blessed Virgin had a part, a real part, in the economy of grace, whether, when she was on earth, she secured by her deeds any claim on our memories; for, if she did, it is impossible we should put her away from us, merely because she is gone hence, and not look at her still, according to the measure of her earthly history, with gratitude and expectation. If, as St. Irenaeus says, she did the part of an advocate, a friend in need, even in her mortal life, if, as St. Jerome and St. Ambrose say, she was on earth the great pattern of virgins, if she had a meritorious share in bringing about our redemption, if her maternity was earned by her faith and obedience, if her divine Son was subject to her, and if she stood by the [{66}] cross with a mother's heart and drank in to the full those sufferings which it was her portion to gaze upon, it is impossible that we should not associate these characteristics of her life on earth with her present state of blessedness; and this surely she anticipated, when she said in her hymn that "all generations shall call her blessed."
I am aware that, in thus speaking, I am following a line of thought which is rather a meditation than an argument in controversy, and I shall not carry it further; but still, in turning to other topics, it is to the point to inquire whether the popular astonishment, excited by our belief in the Blessed Virgin's present dignity, does not arise from the circumstance that the bulk of men, engaged in matters of the world, have never calmly considered her historical position in the gospels so as rightly to realize (if I may use the word a second time) what that position imports. I do not claim for the generality of Catholics any greater powers of reflection upon the objects of their faith than Protestants commonly have, but there is a sufficient number of religious men among Catholics who, instead of expending their devotional energies (as so many serious Protestants do) on abstract doctrines, such as justification by faith only, or the sufficiency of holy Scripture, employ themselves in the contemplation of Scripture facts, and bring out in a tangible form the doctrines involved in them, and give such a substance and color to the sacred history as to influence their brethren, who, though superficial themselves, are drawn by their Catholic instinct to accept conclusions which they could not indeed themselves have elicited, but which, when elicited, they feel to be true. However, it would be out of place to pursue this course of reasoning here; and instead of doing so, I shall take what perhaps you may think a very bold step--I shall find the doctrine of our Lady's present exaltation in Scripture.
I mean to find it in the vision of the woman and child in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse. [Footnote 14] Now here two objections will be made to me at once: first, that such an interpretation is but poorly supported by the fathers; and secondly, that in ascribing such a picture of the Madonna (as it may be called) to the apostolic age, I am committing an anachronism.
[Footnote 14: Vid. "Essay on Doctr. Development," p. 384, and Bishop Ullathorne's work on the "Immaculate Conception," p. 77.]
As to the former of these objections, I answer as follows: Christians have never gone to Scripture for proofs of their doctrines till there was actual need from the pressure of controversy. If in those times the Blessed Virgin's dignity were unchallenged on all hands as a matter of doctrine, Scripture, as far as its argumentative matter was concerned, was likely to remain a sealed book to them. Thus, to take an instance in point, the Catholic party in the English Church (say the Non-jurors), unable by their theory of religion simply to take their stand on tradition, and distressed for proof of their doctrines, had their eyes sharpened to scrutinize and to understand the letter of holy Scripture, which to others brought no instruction. And the peculiarity of their interpretations is this--that they have in themselves great logical cogency, yet are but faintly supported by patristical commentators. Such is the use of the word
or facere in our Lord's institution of the holy eucharist, which, by a reference to the old Testament, is found to be a word of sacrifice. Such again is
